Stalker admits threats

MAT-SU — One month to the day after Sarah PAC member Shawn R. Christy, 18, spent $200 on a ticket to a Pennsylvania fund-raiser where Sarah Palin was speaking, an Anchorage magistrate issued restraining orders preventing him from contacting or coming within a mile of the Palin family or Kristan Cole. Christy attended that August fund-raiser. He doesn’t deny he made threats against Palin and Cole. He doesn’t deny quoting the Bible in his letters and e-mails.

He does deny he intended to harm the President of the United States, U.S. Sen. John McCain or Palin. All total, his father, Craig Christy, estimates his son made well over 100 threats against these three.

“Even Shawn would tell you ‘I wish I’d handled this differently,’” his father said in a phone interview from the McAdoo, Pa., home where Shawn lives with his parents.

“I was in the wrong,” Shawn Christy said. “I think I learned my lesson and I am still learning my lesson.”

Based on the public’s response to the news the Frontiersman broke earlier this week, which has been picked up by news outlets nationally, local police have set up a security grid around the Christy family’s home.

“They’re bringing in officers from other cities,” Craig Christy said. “This is all I do anymore.”

Back in October 2008, Shawn supported Palin’s bid to become vice president.

“He was a definite fan of the Palins,” Craig said. “He called the governor’s office asking for election information and how he could help out in October 2008.”

Shawn Christy was 16 at the time. A month later, he argued with his parents and bought a bus ticket to Washington, D.C.

Craig Christy spent the next 15 hours searching the woods near their home, calling for his son.

His son was hundreds of miles away by then, camping on the lawn in front of the Washington Memorial. That’s when the Secret Service first met Shawn, his father said.

Hours later, Shawn called home.

“’I’m OK, but could you come and pick me up? I’m cold and hungry,’” his father recounted. “We got him home from that and we figure it was just a teenage thing, that he needed to spread his wings a little.”

Though Shawn was a minor at the time, it would be six months before Craig and Karen Christy learned the Secret Service had interviewed their son.

“The amazing thing with that is, we know for a fact in November 2008, security knew about Shawn and no one informed us until June 3, 2009,” Craig said.

A few days after his contact with the Secret Service in 2008, Shawn said his phone and computer began acting in a weird way. He thought the Secret Service had bugged his phone and computer and he wanted them to fix it.

“The first thing in his mind he thinks his parents won’t believe him,” Craig Christy said. “So he takes it on himself.”

He called. He wrote. He threatened.

“It was a general progression,” Craig Christy said. “He was trying to get through to somebody.”

Craig and Karen Christy learned about their son’s behavior June 3, 2009, when Pennsylvania State Troopers showed up at their door. They’d come across one of Shawn Christy’s letters to McCain. Officers told his parents they weren’t sure if the letter was a threat or an attempt to warn the U.S. senator.

“It was like a nightmare. An absolute nightmare,” Craig Christy said. “Standing in my living room with three state troopers calling, the U.S. Capitol Police, I’m thinking ‘He’s in jail forever.’”

Secret Service agents showed up at their house June 18 and Shawn told them — threat by threat — what he’d done.

The next month, Shawn Christy ran away again.

This time his dad didn’t scour the woods around McAdoo. He ran, on foot, to the neighboring town where the police station was open and told police there that he knew his son was on a bus headed to Washington, D.C. Then Pennsylvania police contacted the U.S. Capitol Police and told them Shawn Christy had been reported as a runaway.

“Washington, D.C., had 450 people looking for him,” Craig Christy said.

When his bus arrived, he headed to the White House to surrender to Secret Service. In front of the Capitol Police Department, an officer recognized Shawn Christy as the runaway.

While his parents were home praying their son would get to a safe place, a 24-person tactical team was responding with weapons drawn, forcing him to the ground and handcuffing him.

Capitol Police had a warrant to arrest Shawn then, but did not, Craig Christy said. “They offered to put him in a U.S. Capitol Police car and bring him home.”

He had a second interview with the Secret Service in July 2009. That conversation resulted in a July 3, 2009, psychiatric evaluation, Craig Christy said.

“The Secret Service said his psych evaluation was clean and as far as they are concerned, it’s a closed matter,” he said. “Now all these months later they filed a protection order.”

Craig Christy said the agent asked Shawn to promise not to threaten Palin again.

“It’s amazing to me that now he’s an incredible threat,” he said.

He did buy a one-way plane ticket April 22 for a May 4 Alaska Airlines flight to Anchorage, his father said. But he never used the ticket because he couldn’t afford a return flight, he said.

Shawn sold his Mossberg 500 shotgun April 27, and sent letters to Palin and Cole the same day that included copies of the receipt for the gun sale, which included his name, address and driver’s license number, his father said.

His parents were surprised when he bought the gun in October 2009 shortly after turning 18. “OK. What’s going on with this? Why is our son allowed to do this?” Christy said.

Craig Christy said after all his son had done, he was surprised he was still able to purchase the weapon.

For Cole and Palin, the matter escalated two weeks ago when Shawn Christy purchased a Tracfon with a 907 number. His father said he contacted Cole and others close to the Palin family, looking for answers.

When he called from a 907 area code, Cole said it was the final straw.

“When someone sends you proof that they’ve purchased weapons, proof that they know where you live and said that they are looking into purchasing a one-way plane ticket to Alaska and then calls from a cell phone with a 907 number, it’s over the line and we need protecting,” she said in an interview Monday.

Cole and Palin on Monday sought and received protective orders from an Anchorage magistrate, barring Shawn Christy from contacting them for 20 days. Both seek longer protective orders, which the Christy family says they will contest when they participate by phone in the Oct. 13 hearing.

On Tuesday, a Wasilla Police Officer called and read the protective order to Shawn and Craig Christy, who say they were thousands of miles away at their Pennsylvania home.

Contact Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.